The beauty of head to head racing is that it boils everything down to win or lose. Many talk a good game as they head up to the starting line of a drag strip. Surprisingly, 1,320 feet end all debates.
The Internet mini-series, Pony Wars, from the Horsepower Wars automotive channel, was created to pit modified muscle cars head-to-head to find the best all-around performer. The producers added a bit of a twist for the second season.
Pony Wars 2 posed the question that many into high performance automotive were asking. That is, “If you took the best LS tuner, Ford Mustang, and Dodge Challenger tuners and put them in a head-to-head competition, who would win?”
This article is the second part of a four-part series with Ron Mowen, owner of Vengeance Racing. We focused this series on the racing portion of his performance business and, in this article, his involvement in the widely-seen Pony Wars 2 mini-series.
What follows is our transcribed interview adapted from our new “Vettes of Atlanta” podcast.
Head To Head Battle
ROD WORLEY – Editor – Ron, we’ve been talking horsepower and racing. Let’s switch it up a bit and talk about your crushing defeat of the competition at the Pony Wars 2 last year.
We could easily do a whole podcast episode on this Internet mini-series where you faced off against the country’s best Ford Mustang and Dodge Challenger tuners.
Take us behind the scenes of how you got selected, your confidence level going in, and the commitment it took for you to participate.
RON MOWEN – Vengeance Racing – Well, Rod, this was the first time we’d ever done anything like this event. Power Automedia reached out to us and asked us if we would compete against the top Dodge Challenger shop and the country’s top Ford Mustang shop.
They said it would be aired on the Internet for everybody to see. And of course, I was interested and, I was flattered they chose Vengeance Racing to represent the GM side of things.
Power Automedia told us point-blank they considered us the pinnacle of LS performance. They wanted us to build a performance Camaro for the competition.
Expectations Are High
ROD WORLEY – Editor – Going into the competition, were there any concerns you had?
RON MOWEN – Vengeance Racing – Any time you do a TV show of sorts, you have to wonder what goes on behind the scenes, and if people are going to stick to the rules. In racing, you know, people like to bend the rules to suit themselves in any way possible.
And I’m pretty much a stickler for the rules. So I just wasn’t sure how I was going to fare.
You know, you also have to take into consideration that when you’re pushing things to the absolute limits to maintain the rules but win the competition, that stuff breaks and unexpected things happens.
The last thing I wanted to do was embarrass our company, or not bring home the title. Fortunately for us, there were no embarrassments, and we brought back the crown.
Significant Commitment
ROD WORLEY – Editor – Ron, this level of competition has to bring a substantial commitment both in time and resources.
RON MOWEN – Vengeance Racing – As far as commitment goes, I guess I should mention that we purchased a new Camaro for the event and transported it to California.
We built it at Power America’s facility. They gave us the option to use a customer’s car or to bring our new vehicle.
I didn’t want to use a customer’s vehicle. There wasn’t a customer I knew, nor did I want to take a customer’s car and put it in a situation like this one.
I was unsure of what it was going to go through. I didn’t want to thrash it and then give it back to the owner.
So we bought a car and shipped it to California. We ended up flying out there and building the car over seven days within the confines of the rules that they had laid out.
The Mustang builders were there at the same time. They built their car in California with us.
Unbeknownst to me at the time, the Dodge Challenger team assembled their car in their facility two weeks after we built ours, which was a little bit sketchy.
Trophy From Old Parts
ROD WORLEY – Editor – You’re right that does sound sketchy.
RON MOWEN – Vengeance Racing – Yes, I wasn’t too impressed with that. I felt like all three cars should have been built under the same supervision to ensure that fairness was in play.
Nonetheless, it didn’t seem to matter. In the end, we dominated pretty much all the fields, except for the 60 to zero braking. Somehow that tank of a Dodge Challenger stopped on a dime.
For us, we had had to go back to our stock brake pads. The pads they provided for the competition failed on us.
Our only option for the autocross was to put our stock Brembo pads back on. So we didn’t have the upgraded pads to go out there and do the 60 to zero as the other guys did.
But the show was great. We got a lot of attention from it. You know, as I said earlier, we dominated all classes.
The irony for us came after we finished the dyno tuning portion. The show announced us as the winner, and they pull out the trophy.
Come to find out; they had built the trophy from old parts from our car. It had the front bumper support, rods, pistons, and things like that.
So it seems as though our winning was meant to be. As if the show knew we were coming out there to win.
Drama Doesn’t Change Results
ROD WORLEY – Editor – I can’t imagine having the top tuners in one competition and not having some tension. Egos being what they are normally, when you get the best tuners under one roof there is bound to be drama.
RON MOWEN – Vengeance Racing – You’re right, with any TV show, there’s always a little bit of drama. There certainly was here. I don’t think the other teams expected us to fare as well as we did.
There were some issues on the autocross where they tried to tell us that we knocked over a cone that we didn’t. Fortunately, we had video footage proving that we didn’t.
And then when we put the Camaro on the dyno, and it made the power that it made. They told us that there was no way that we could make that kind of horsepower on the fuel that they supplied and with the fuel system components that we had ordered for the competition.
So they had us replace the fuel system components with new ones in the box that they supplied to ensure that we hadn’t cheated. We still made the same power.
So it was while it was a little frustrating to get called out, it was also flattering that we had beaten them so bad to the point that they thought we cheated to do it and we didn’t. So, but overall, great experience.
I was looking forward to coming back this year and defending our title. Unfortunately, with everything going on, it’s not going to happen this year. We’ll pick up next year where we left off and see if the show can bring in some new teams to challenge us.
Dominance At The Drag Strip
ROD WORLEY – Editor – The Pony Wars Season Two was a great series to watch. They kept the pace moving forward with the three teams throughout the episodes.
As you would expect, all of us here and our readers were rooting for you to bring the trophy back to Cumming, GA. In the end, Vengeance Racing got some well-deserved national exposure.
RON MOWEN – Vengeance Racing – Well, you know, it’s funny. We just kept winning. We won the autocross in my view based on the video evidence.
Our Camaro came up short on the 60 mph to zero breaking challenge. We knew we would win the dyno portion of the competition based on the Dodge Challenger’s performance in the autocross.
It was clearly down on power. And then we went to the drag race portion.
We made one pass, and we were so far ahead of everybody that our car sat all day and all night. We made two more passes when the air temperature cooled off so we could go out there and have some fun racing the other guys.
But we won the event with our first pass off the trailer, literally. The other two teams raced all day, thrashed their cars and swapped parts, you named it, and they did it. In the end, they didn’t come anywhere close to us.
Experience Wins Out
ROD WORLEY – Editor – If you could boil it down Ron, what was the key to your dominance?
RON MOWEN – Vengeance Racing – Rod, it was just a matter of us having our program down, having built so many of them. We know what the engine wants, how to calibrate them, and efficiently get them down the track.
The other guys didn’t have the same experience level that we had when it came to that. And it showed.
Results Speak For Themselves
Watching Pony Wars 2, it was evident that each team was there to win. They wanted bragging rights on a national stage in front of a vast automotive audience.
Professional egos, personalities, and drama aside, in this competition, it came down to verifiable numbers. Results mattered, and at the end of 1,320 feet, there was only one champion, Vengeance Racing.
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